Ehryn Torrell

Ehryn Torrell is a London, UK-based Canadian artist who works with montage, painting, digital production and textiles to draw attention to the constructed nature of images. Through montage, she takes apart and reconstructs what is otherwise a totalising force: the fashion image. Fashion images use bodies to buy and sell goods while constructing normative images of gender, race, sexuality and class. Torrell’s current body of work is created with image fragments torn from the pages of Vogue. The resulting montage is scanned and printed onto linen, where embroidery is used to create what Torrell calls ‘textile painting.’ She cuts and stitches into the fabric and its imagery, adding appliqué to create depth and stitching actual seams onto printed seams. The play between real and illusionary in the work is particularly emphasised through digital embroidery, which is created in collaboration with Andrew Kenny of London Embroidery Studio. Through tears, layering and glimpses of subject matter, Torrell aims to communicate a resistance to recognition and wholeness; to create a space where images are slowed and open possibilities for other imaginings.

For her Art Futures project, Ehryn will create a textile painting made entirely of embroidery, pushing her practice by removing the digitally printed image. In collaboration with Andrew Kenny, Torrell will produce 12 digitally embroidered wall works based on a montage she created with the June 2019 collector’s edition of Harper’s Bazaar. The issue was selected because it was made to commemorate Lee Krasner’s ground-breaking exhibition at The Barbican, where many of her works were shown for the first time in the UK. The exhibition featured an important work for Torrell, which is Krasner’s 1976 collage painting Imperative. This work is composed with cut up drawings that Krasner made during her student days under the tutelage of Hans Hofmann. The oppressive patriarchal memories of this time in Krasner’s life no longer served her, so she transformed them by putting them into the splicer of her art. Linking this liberating and inventive period in Krasner’s practice to her own methods, Torrell created a montage with the collector’s edition Harper’s Bazaar. This Art Furtures’ project is titled Collectors’ Edition, which like all of Torrell’s textile paintings, refers to text on the magazine’s front page. It will be digitally embroidered with up to 15 thread colours to create an image that brings montage, collaboration and textile methods to inventive new heights.

An edition of 12, Ehryn’s project, Collector’s Edition, is available to Art Futures collectors for $1200 (+ shipping). The textile piece is sold in a custom frame, ready to hang, measuring 14.25″ x 18″.

To become a patron of Ehryn’s and own this exclusive piece, email ihyw(at)iheartyourwork.com or pay simply and securely here:

In May 2022, I Heart Your Work hosted a virtual project launch with Ehryn. We are pleased to share the artist in conversation about her practice and the development of her Art Futures edition here: